2023-09-10 15:21:48
A pioneer in raising awareness of animal welfare, the Roncalli circus completely removed live animals from its program in 2018.
Clowns, acrobats and magicians on stage, smells of sawdust and popcorn, all the traditional circus ingredients are there. Except for the live animals, which the German Roncalli circus replaced with holograms. A pioneer in raising awareness of animal welfare, this circus was, in 1991, the first to do without wild animals in Germany. And in 2018, he completely removed live animals from his program.
«For Roncalli, it is no longer appropriate to show real animals on stage“, insists to AFP the director of the circus, Patrick Philadelphia. On the one hand, circuses find themselves increasingly physically constrained with urban densification, he notes. “If you set up in the middle of a market square, in the center of a town, there is not enough space for outdoor enclosures for animals to run around in.», Explains this 49-year-old man.
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The nomadic life inherent to the circus also makes daily life difficult for animals like horses, loaded in vans to the next destination. “For a circus that protects animals, it no longer made sense», summarizes Mr. Philadelphia. Looking for a way to maintain an animal presence, particularly appreciated by children, it is a “duobetween Justin Timberlake and a hologram of the late Prince who inspired him to use 3D imagery. “If you can project the image of someone who is no longer of this world, why not do it with an animal?“, he summarizes.
Under the passage marquee in Lübeck (north), a steam train surrounding the track launches the festivities to the sound of “Sunday Morning, the hit by Nico and The Velvet Underground. Then a bright green parrot appears, soon replaced by an elephant and its baby elephant, who stamp their feet and trumpet, themselves chased by galloping horses.
Technical challenge
Making the visual illusion realistic proved to be a technical challenge, with the spectators positioned around the track, unlike in the theater where the audience faces the stage. Coming from eleven cameras fixed at height, the high-resolution images are projected onto a fine mesh net which vertically surrounds the scene. With the lights dimmed, it becomes almost invisible, but the images stand out.
The absence of animals contributes to the fame of the circus. Thus, if Sophie Schult had not “never heard of Roncalli before“, she has “discovered that they really had no more animals». «It was particularly important to me“Explains this 29-year-old student, who had bad memories of previous shows. “I always remember the narrow cages in which they were kept. Animal cruelty, in fact», she says during the intermission.
Even without real elephants or lions, Andreas Domke and his two sons attend the performance enthusiastically. “It’s fine without it, because they’re really trying to make something original out of the rest of the show», Judges this 39-year-old doctor. The magic of the show also works on the less young, like Mathias and Marina Martens, 63 years old each, who say they had the impression of returning to childhood. “The acrobatics were fabulous“, says Mathias Martens, whose wife is categorical: “Animals don’t need to be here. To see them, the zoo is enough».
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